{"id":2719,"date":"2010-04-13T17:28:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T16:28:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=2719"},"modified":"2010-04-13T17:28:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T16:28:18","slug":"hens-and-chickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=2719","title":{"rendered":"Hens and chickens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/hens.jpg\" width=\"200\" height=\"150\" align=\"right\" style=\"margin:0 0 10px 15px;\" alt=\"Hens\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There are a number of words in English for the domesticated fowl <em>Gallus gallus domesticus<\/em>: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chicken &#8211; general word for the birds and their meat<\/li>\n<li>Cock \/ Rooster &#8211; adult male<\/li>\n<li>Cockerel &#8211; adult male under a year old<\/li>\n<li>Hen -adult female<\/li>\n<li>Pullet &#8211; young female<\/li>\n<li>Chook &#8211; general word for the birds used in Australia, New Zealand and some varieties of British English<\/li>\n<li>Broiler &#8211; a type of chicken raised specifically for meat production<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Chicken<\/strong> originally referred only to the chicks of this species, and the general term for them was domestic fowl or fowl. It comes from the Old English word <em>cicen<\/em> (also written <em>cycen<\/em> and <em>ciecen<\/em>) and is probably a diminutive of <em>cocc<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cock<\/strong> comes from the Old English <em>cocc<\/em> (male bird) and is thought to be an imitation of the sounds made by birds.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rooster<\/strong> is derived from to roost, from the Old English <em>hr\u00f3st<\/em> (perch \/ roost), and was originally roost cock in the 17th century but lost the second half of the phrase thanks to Puritan influence.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hen<\/strong> comes from the Old English <em>henn<\/em>, which can be traced back to the PIE root <em>*kan<\/em> (to sing), via the West Germanic <em>*khannjo<\/em>, the feminine form of <em>*khan(e)ni<\/em> (male fowl, cock &#8211; lit. &#8220;bird who sings for sunrise&#8221;). In Old English <em>hana<\/em> was cock\/rooster. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Pullet<\/strong> comes from the Latin <em>pullus<\/em> (a young animal or bird) via the Old French <em>poulette<\/em> (chicken), a diminutive <em>poule<\/em> (hen), and the Anglo-Norman <em>pullet<\/em> (chick \/ young bird).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cockerel<\/strong> is just a diminutive of cock.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Chook<\/strong> probably comes from the British dialect words <em>chuck<\/em> or <em>chucky<\/em> (chicken) and is imitative of the sound made by chickens.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Broiler<\/strong> comes from the Old French bruller (to broil, roast).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a number of words in English for the domesticated fowl Gallus gallus domesticus: Chicken &#8211; general word for the birds and their meat Cock \/ Rooster &#8211; adult male Cockerel &#8211; adult male under a year old Hen -adult female Pullet &#8211; young female Chook &#8211; general word for the birds used in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,111,10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-language","category-latin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2719\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}